Strawberries

Yum, picked fresh from the garden, tasting sumptuous, enough for dessert for us all. Large!! Loving this time of year

It must be summer

This is the earliest we have had strawberries every. Enough for dessert. We are having these gorgeous red strawberries with homemade Feijoa and Ginger ice-cream ( just added homemade jam to the recipe here).

The strawberries are in the new garden bed that I dug and built this winter and I have gone back to being traditional for planting. I used black weed mat and it certainly not only represses weeds but the soil under is so warm.

Yum Yum in our tum.

A new strawberry bed

I have reclaimed the last bit of lawn that I am allowed. But all in a good cause - a new strawberry bed. I had forgotten how much hard work it is to dig up turf, do edging etc. This garden is 100% eco friendly, recycled and upcycled. The bricks are from various chimneys that came down in the earthquakes, The edges of the paths were from tiles already in the garden and just used in a better format. Then I dug out some of the chook pen and put all the lovely stuff on top of a pile of shredding I had done. Added some compost with loads of worms. A leftover 1.5 metres of weed matting from another job and viola a bed ready for a scrummy strawberry summer. (not to say sore bottom muscles from all the digging and brick moving.)

I still have to finish digging up the bed behind the strawberry patch, but at least it's edging is in too and as it will be a potato patch it is too early anyway.

The chooks are super happy as they have a new lawn for their run. I love the way they recycle things for me.

What do normal people do on a Saturday night?

I think of myself as highly normally usually but tonight I am not so sure. I have spent the last 1.5 hours making jam. Yes it is now 10.25pm and I have just finished and bottled up the second batch of jam for the night. Even I think that is a bit strange!! But the fruit wont stay fresh through willpower. So there are 3 jars of Strawberry jam and 8 jars of Blackcurrant jam all made. Yummy yum yum.

The first seeds sprouting for the new season

Well two weeks ago I sowed a pile of seeds. Knowing this to be optimistic but I just couldn't resist. Inspite of three days of snow and some incredibly chilly weather after I have sprouts!!! The little container is a pile of mizuna to cut and use in salads just as new leaves. In the big container is my mix for mescalin salad - some red and green bok choy, coriander, red lettuce. All things quite cold hardy and yummy in another four weeks we will be having summer salad.

I planted some presprouted cauliflower in amongst what is my new strawberry bed. I had a big clean out of the old strawberry bed which has been going strong for 9 years. But have decided to reduce that in size and slowly phase out whilst starting somewhere new. The new season's broad beans are in the back of the bed and I am looking forward to broad bean humus.Yum.